The goal of this activity is to test the correctness and completeness of the download and installation instructions for a FOSS project.

Prerequisite Knowledge

Some understanding of how to download and install software.

Learning Objectives

Learners will understand where to look for download and install instructions for a FOSS project, understand the features of download and install instructions, be able to follow and assess download and install instructions.

Background:

All open source projects want new users. However, the download and install instructions for many projects are either incomplete or out of date. Testing the download and install directions and providing feedback to the community would be

Directions:

Find a project of interest. There is a list at the end of this activity.

Search the project documentation to identify the location of the download and install directions. These instructions may be found on the project web site or within the code itself, perhaps in a README file.

Follow the download instructions, taking note of any problems or issues that you found.

Follow the installation instructions, taking note of any problems or issues that you found.

Deliverables:

A discussion of what you found which should include:

A description of the operating system and environment within which you performed the download and install

An itemized list of the issues that you found when trying to download and install the product.

A list of what could be done to improve the download and install instructions.

Variation: Repeat the above for the development environment.

Assessment:

Comments:

The download and installation instructions for projects may be located on the project web site but may also be loaded within the actual code. Therefore, learners may need to find the code repo and do some searching there. Install dependencies may complicate the download and install.